Hortus Eystettensis

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (January 2022) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 9,120 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Hortus Eystettensis (Werk)]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Hortus Eystettensis (Werk)}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Sunflower

from Hortus Eystettensis

Hortus Eystettensis (Garden of Eichstätt) is the short title of a book produced by

The Bishop, Johann Konrad von Gemmingen (1561-1612), commissioned Besler, who was in charge of the garden, to produce the work in 1611, to record his achievements for posterity. Besler worked on the project for sixteen years, although the bishop died before its completion. Besler had the assistance of his brother and a group of skilled German draughtsmen and engravers, including Sebastian Schedel, an accomplished painter, and Wolfgang Kilian, a skilled engraver from Augsburg. Kilian and his team engraved the initial copper plates, but after the bishop’s death, the operations moved to Nürnberg and a new team of engravers, among whom were Johannes Leypold, Georg Gärtner, Levin and Friedrich van Hulsen, Peter Isselburg, Heinrich Ulrich, Dominicus Custos and Servatius Raeven. Camerarius' nephew, Ludwig Jungermann (1572–1653), was a botanist and wrote most of the descriptive text.^[1] On its completion it was the magnificent example of a florilegium produced to that date,^[2] and an example of a herbal.^[3]

The emphasis in botanicals of previous centuries had been on medicinal and culinary herbs, and these had usually been depicted in a crude manner. The images were often inadequate for identification, and had little claim to being aesthetic. The Hortus Eystettensis changed botanical art overnight. The plates were of garden flowers, herbs and vegetables, exotic plants such as

at a price of 2,500 florins – five coloured copies' worth of Hortus Eystettensis.

The work generally reflected the four seasons, showing first the flowering and then the fruiting stages. "Winter" was sparsely represented with a mere 7 plates. "Spring" was a season of abundance with 134 plates illustrating 454 plants and "Summer" in full swing showed 505 plants on 184 plates. "Autumn" closed off the work with 42 plates and 98 species. The modern French translation of the herbal appears under the title Herbier des quatres saisons, and the Italian version (1998) is L'erbario delle quattro stagioni.^[2]

Descriptions of the plants were in Latin and showed remarkable anticipation of the binomial system, in that the captions often consisted of the first two or three words of the description. Besler's portrait appears on the frontispiece holding a sprig of basil, punning on his name. The work was published twice more in Nuremberg, in 1640 and 1713, using the same plates. Three hundred twenty nine of the 366 plates were found in the Albertina in 1994.^[5]

See also

• List of most expensive books and manuscripts

References

Bibliography

• Besler, Basilius (1640) [1613]. Hortus Eystettensis, sive, Diligens et accurata omnium plantarum, florum, stirpium: ex variis orbis terrae partibus, singulari studio collectarum, quae in celeberrimis viridariis arcem episcopalem ibidem cingentibus, olim conspiciebantur delineatio et ad vivum repraesentatio et advivum repraesentatio opera (in Latin). Nürnberg.
• Barker, Nicolas (1994). Hortus Eystettensis: The Bishop's Garden and Besler's Magnificent Book.
  ISBN 978-0-8109-3424-5
  .
• British Library (2022). "Hortus Eystettensis". British Library Treasures. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
• Akram, Razwana (28 February 2017). "The Garden of Eichstatt". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
• Chetham's Library (2022). "Besler's Hortus Eystettensis". Collections. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
• Hortus Eystettensis at the Service de la documentation University of Strasbourg
• Online version of the Teylers Museum copy of the Hortus Eystettensis 1613 luxury edition (hand-coloured, text in manuscript).

This article needs additional or more specific categories. Please help out by adding categories to it so that it can be listed with similar articles. (December 2023)